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“Flatchet said you two were going to be captains?”
“Lieutenants at first,” answered Gord, “but when we offered to bring in two companies, he said we would be captains at five luckies per, plus a bounty based on the totals of our pledges, so we could have faith in you guys. Then he kicked in an advance to help us recruit.”
“I haven’t got that kind of cash now, fellows, honest. Tomorrow-”
“Too late,” Gellor broke in. “We’re out of this.”
Gord and Gellor made to leave, but just then the second of Flatchet’s lieutenants entered with a couple of recruits. With the arrival of his comrade, Taw saw a way out of this fix, and told them to wait just a second. He pulled the other lieutenant, Swutch, into the bedchamber and closed the door. The two new recruits, tough and mean-looking, glared at Gord and his one-eyed companion. The looks they got in return caused the pair to gaze elsewhere until Taw and Swutch reentered the main room a couple of minutes later. Swutch quickly signed up the two cutthroats and hustled them out, barring the door on the inside as they left.
“You’d better be right,” Swutch said ominously to Taw as the pair moved aside the heavy table, grabbed a plank, and heaved. A trapdoor, cleverly hidden, opened to reveal a cellar below.
Taw descended the steep stairway. Swutch motioned for Gord and Gellor to follow, and he came last, closing the trapdoor behind him. Taw’s candle shed only a faint illumination, but he soon had another pair of thick tallow candles flaming, so that Gord was able to see the place clearly.
They were in an earthen cellar, fairly deep, with ledges built along the walls. It was originally a place for storage of roots and the like, now used as a repository for something far more valuable. Somehow Flatchet and his associates had managed to get a great iron trunk into this place. Gord was reminded of Theobald’s strongbox-only this chest was at least ten times that size. Empty, it would weigh several hundred pounds, he guessed.
Taw stood in front of the chest, shielding what he was doing, but in a moment he had completed his secret manipulations. There was a grating noise as he turned the key, and then he called Swutch to help him with the lid. The pair lifted the slab of metal so that it rested at an angle against the dirt wall behind. Inside were more electrum, silver, and copper coins than Gord had seen in his life.
“Let’s see,” murmured Taw. “Each of you gets five luckies, and commons totaling three hundred, plus…”
Swutch turned back toward the recruits, just in time to get out a warning to his partner: “Look out!”
Gord attacked Swutch even as he spoke, his dagger glinting darkly in the pale light. Gellor, meanwhile, sprang forward to engage Taw, who pulled a heavy-bladed knife from his belt the moment his partner shouted the warning. The combat was noisy and protracted, but little if any of the sound would reach any listener above.
Gord wounded his opponent several times, taking only a small cut in return. Swutch wasn’t nearly as skilled at dagger work as the young thief. The lieutenant feinted a move toward the stair, leaped the other way, and struck out at one of the heavy candles, which went out. Gord understood his desire. In darkness, Gord’s skill and acrobatic movements would be negated. The fight would become blind groping, striking at sounds. Swutch made another feint, hoping to drive Gord away so that he could extinguish the other candle. As he reversed himself toward the taper, Gord moved squarely into his path, and Swutch fell back, wounded again by the keen point of Gord’s long dirk.
“Take it all!” Swutch cried. “Kill Taw if you have to, but let me go! I’ll never be seen again-honest!” But even as the bandit lieutenant begged for his life, he hurled his blade. Gord sidestepped quickly, and the dagger, which had been headed for his throat, caught him in the shoulder instead. With Gord momentarily disabled, Swutch lunged for the stairs. He leaped to the fourth step, rushed upward, and strained to heave open the trapdoor. Two daggers struck him in rapid succession as he did so. The first was Gord’s, the second Swutch’s own-withdrawn from where it had stuck in Gord’s left shoulder. That blow finished the would-be escapee, who slumped lifeless at the top of the stairway.
As he turned, Gord saw Gellor avoid a knife swipe and then lunge forward to strike Taw a tremendous blow to the temple with the pommel of his dagger. The bandit fell heavily. Gellor added a couple of blows with the blade of his weapon for good measure, then turned to Gord when he was satisfied that Taw was finished.
“Let me see that wound,” Gellor said, moving close enough to examine where Swutch’s blade had bitten into Gord’s shoulder. “You’re bleeding heavily, but you’ll be all right,” he said calmly as he reached into his belt-sack for a swatch of cloth.
The flow of blood was easily staunched, for the wound was clean and not terribly deep; Gord’s padded doublet had taken much of the force away. Gellor bandaged the puncture with the surehandedness and swiftness of one who had done this sort of thing often before.
“It’ll pain you for a few days, and unless you get a cleric to take care of it, you’ll have to get someone to sew it shut, but you’ll survive.” He was gri
“Let’s get that coin and get out!”
Both men began quickly separating the coins. Copper went onto the dirt floor, silver to one side of the chest, electrum to the other. Eventually, they had the stuff roughly divided, and then it was time to load it up. Using the shirts of the two lieutenants, they created makeshift sacks for the luckies, tossing in a few of the silver nobles to complete each load.
“That was inspired, Gord. Good thing for you I’m fast on the uptake,” Gellor said as they bent to the sorting of coins. Then he paused and looked at his companion. “What made you think of this? I saw you put the drug in Flatchet’s ale, but the rest was one of the best-pla
While Gord kept working on the loot, he told Gellor that the powder was something used by the Rhe
Gellor looked down into the huge iron box. “You’ve hit the bottom,” he said. “Let’s get going.”
“No, take another look at the bottom. It’s about half a foot too shallow!”
Gellor reached down, put the fingers of one hand on the floor of the iron container, then extended his outside arm down to the floor. “Right you are! Let’s find the secret panel.”
With that, they two thieves began a careful and painstaking scrutiny of the great trunk. Gord spotted where access to the hidden space beneath the false bottom could be gained and called his comrade’s attention to it. Both examined the place minutely.
“Don’t screw around with it, Gord. Those tiny scratches are some sort of magical runes-and there’s at least one needle trap here, too. See the hole? It’s time to take what we’ve got and clear out.”
“I’ve got another idea to try before we give up,” said Gord.
“Help me tip this thing so it’s bottom up, and I’ll show you something you’re going to like.”
Gellor shook his head in doubt and disagreement, but he took a hold on the chest and assisted Gord in standing it on its side. Coins spilled out and rolled across the hard-packed earth. Gord tugged the lid shut, and the pair levered the big box to rest on its top. A rusty slab of iron covering the underside of the trunk presented itself to view.
“Now what?” Gellor asked sarcastically as he watched Gord draw his dagger. Then he gaped when he saw Gord’s dagger-point scribing a shallow gash in the metal bottom. “What the hell you got there, Gord? I’ve never seen a blade cut like that before!”